Inkscape 0.45: overview

Undo history

Inkscape now features a History Dialog accessible through [CTRL] + [SHIFT] + H or Edit→Undo History. All changes to the document since it was opened are recorded here.

In the dialog, changes are listed from the oldest (top) to the newest (bottom).

The type of each change is indicated by an icon and a short description.

For readability, consecutive changes of the same type are placed in a collapsable branch showing a triangle marker and the number of the hidden actions in the branch.

By clicking on an event event in the list, you can easily move through the undo history, i.e. undo or redo any number of actions with one click.

The Undo and Redo commands in the Edit menu display the descriptions of the commands to be undone and redone, correspondingly.

Speed

Radial gradients are rendered faster by at least 10%.

Screen render is faster by 2-3%, up to 5% for complex drawings with transparency.

Display is more responsive when working at high zoom levels when using a tablet.

[rendering quality and speed - jasper]

Command line

The new --export-pdf command line parameter allows exporting an SVG image to PDF from command line.

Misc improvements

[new cursors - scislac]

[PDF/EPS export improvements - Ulf Erikson]

Exported PNG images have the correct resolution set in the headers.

[New PDF export via Cairo - ???]

Bugfixes

When deleting a node, update neighboring smooth nodes to be cusp nodes because symmetry is broken.

Tools

Dropper

Instead of the confusing toggle button, now the Controls bar for the Dropper tool has two checkboxes, "Pick alpha" and "Set alpha", which work as follows. Suppose you have an object selected and, using Dropper, click on an object which has red (#FF0000) fill and 0.5 opacity (half-transparent).

If the "Pick alpha" checkbox is off, the selected object will get the fill color #800000 (i.e. faded-out red) and fill opacity will be at 1.0 (opaque).

If the "Pick alpha" checkbox is on but "Set alpha" is off, the selected object will get the fill color #FF0000 (red) and fill opacity will be at 1.0.

If both "Pick alpha" and "Set alpha" are on, the selected object will get the fill color #FF0000 (red) and fill opacity will be at 0.5 (half-transparent).

If you Shift+click instead of click, the same changes will be made to stroke color and stroke opacity, correspondingly. Note that in no situation can Dropper change the master opacity of the selected object(s), although it can pick it just as it does any other kind of opacity.

Translations

Remarkable improvements are the finnish and the danish translation of the userinterface. The finnish translation jumped from 0 to 100 percent and the danish was lifted from 5 percent to over 75 percent in a short timespan.

Known problems

Problems with some Debian libgc-6.7 packages

Inkscape will hang or crash when linked with the first Debian packaged version of the Boehm garbage collection library. This problem was fixed in version 1:6.7-2 of the package. If you have libgc 6.7 on your Debian-based system, make sure that you are using that version of the package or later.

Beware of defective themes on Linux

Inkscape and other Gtk programs can crash on any Linux, when the gtk2-engines-smooth / libsmooth package is installed. We have filed a bug against libsmooth which is now in gtk-engine and part of gnome. Removing the package resolves the problem. Update: this bug appears to be fixed in newer versions of gtk-engines. If you are affected by this problem please update to a newer version of gtk-engines. If problems persist then please inform the gtk-engines maintainers of the problem.

A similar crash happens if the KDE Baghira theme or the package gtk_qt_engine are installed. If you experience Inkscape crashes on KDE, please try to install a different theme from Baghira, or uninstall the gtk_qt_engine package from your system. Both problems also affect older versions of Inkscape.

Make sure to remove menus.xml if you have it

If you were using certain CVS/SVN builds from autumn of 2005, you may have the file menus.xml hanging around in your profile directory (e.g. ~/.inkscape on Linux). In that case you will see many errors about verbs that cannot be found, and some commands in menus will be disabled. Make sure to delete menus.xml to fix this.